I do indeed owe Dutchy a whisky! I thought that the Dutch PM was given very timely help by the Turkish Govt, which is pretty much run from Berlin, who were of course anxious to keep Gert out.

Happily German machinations in London were not so successful, and the assassination attempt on Theresa May failed!

Stalin was taken out by the Russian GRU after they discovered the existence of the DVD and the fact that he was a German agent, hence the attacks on the Red Army and Russia's lack of preparedness for WW2. Churchill didn't know that Joe was working the Germans, indeed talking to his late grandson in the Navy Club in Mayfair a couple of years before his untimely death it is clear that poor old Winnie was kept in the dark until he died.

I like to deliver on my promises Dutchy, so let me know when and where I can buy you that drink!

Sorry I've been slow in replying, but it's been a busy couple of weeks. Assassination attempts invariably increase my workload.

Happily German machinations in London were not so successful, and the assassination attempt on Theresa May failed!

Stalin was taken out by the Russian GRU after they discovered the existence of the DVD and the fact that he was a German agent, hence the attacks on the Red Army and Russia's lack of preparedness for WW2. Churchill didn't know that Joe was working the Germans, indeed talking to his late grandson in the Navy Club in Mayfair a couple of years before his untimely death it is clear that poor old Winnie was kept in the dark until he died.

Wow, Spyhunter in full swing...

Spyhunter wrote:

I like to deliver on my promises Dutchy, so let me know when and where I can buy you that drink!

I'll make it a double then! And Single Malt too! Dutchy - let me know next time you're headed to Little Old England. I daresay you land here from to time to time.

The lunar landings happened, at least the American ones did. The flags and the laser reflectors are still up there, where the Apollo astronauts left them. Remember I've had the privilege of meeting two Apollo mission commanders, General Tom Stafford and Captain Jim Lovell, both very fine men.

Jim's spacemanship after the murderous Germans sabotaged his spacecraft was outstanding. The survival of the Apollo XIII crew was a huge blow to the German DVD. I still have an Apollo XIII patch, which a nice lady from NASA was handing out at a space conference, and a book signed by Jim Lovell.

Sorry again about the delays in replying. After the failed German attempt to assassinate Theresa May there came the false flag gas attack in Idlib Province.

General McMaster is toast. It's now been confirmed that the agent used was NOT Sarin, but either chlorine or a chlorine compound like phosgene. Nothing to do with Damascus - no wonder Pooters was looking so chipper on the evening news. He's really going to hammer the State Department and the Foreign Office over this.

The attack was co-ordinated by Turkish Intelligence, using local al Qaeda assets. We've had people on the ground at Khan Shaykhun and they've got the name of the operational commander, a bird colonel in Turkish Intelligence.

I rejected both Sarin and Syrian government involvement in an article published on Sunday night. By Monday night VT went public with the name of the Turkish intel guy and the leader of the terrorist unit responsible. Putin and Lavrov have seen the VT report, and my article, and went on the offensive today.

The Russians have some good WMD scientists, who have been able to rule Sarin out conclusively. Apart from anything else Sarin can be absorbed dermally - had it been used the medical staff would be dead.

Copies of my article are now circulating on the Hill and in the House of Commons. A back-channel copy for the White House went out a few hours ago.

Boris Johnson and Rex Tillerson are being made to look like house-trained idiots, no offense intended. Only way out for Tillerson is to blame Langley and McMaster. HUGE implications for CIA - they called this one spectacularly wrong and will I am sure be made to pay the institutional price for the greatest intelligence blunder of the 21st century so far. CIA never learnt the lessons of their failures to report the links between Saddam and 9-11 and their screw-up over Iraq's WMD programs, which by the way included both chlorine and phosgene. They tend to politicise intelligence and did so in this case, distorting their analysis in an attempt to match the intel to the agency's political priorities, which in this case included worsening US/Russian relations. They abandoned objectivity completely and produced politically-motivated trash, which is now falling apart like trash intel reports always do when serious intelligence professionals get involved.

It is a great pity that Hollywood does not make greater use of people with aircraft recognition skills - an old episode of Ironside (No Motive For Murder, 1971) was rerun in England this week, on ITV4. Ironside flies to Tokyo and in one of the more spectacular aircraft continuity boo-boos he changes mid-fight from a Boeing Stratocruiser to a 747!

The producers then go on to depict a US amphibious assault in the Pacific by using footage of a British Town-class cruiser, complete with Battle Ensigns, from that fine war movie The Battle of the River Plate!

It is a great pity that Hollywood does not make greater use of people with aircraft recognition skills - an old episode of Ironside (No Motive For Murder, 1971) was rerun in England this week, on ITV4. Ironside flies to Tokyo and in one of the more spectacular aircraft continuity boo-boos he changes mid-fight from a Boeing Stratocruiser to a 747!

The producers then go on to depict a US amphibious assault in the Pacific by using footage of a British Town-class cruiser, complete with Battle Ensigns, from that fine war movie The Battle of the River Plate!

May I take the unsolicited, self-granted liberty of chipping in as a follower of the exchanges between you two fine gentlemen? The bet was agreed circa five months ago and as we are not getting any younger, (I am assuming all three of us are above fifty), details of certain not-so-important matters might slip our minds. So allow me to dig out and refresh the relevant facts pertaining to the points of the agreement. Here we go:

Dutchy wrote:

But lets make it interesting. If you want to put your money were your mouth is, let's put a good bottle of wiskey on it, whether Wilders / PVV is going to be the largest party in the '17 Dutch national elections. Deal?!

Spyhunter wrote:

Deal! Or would you prefer a bottle of Bols, if I lose?

Dutchy wrote:

Nope, no Jenever for me, don't like it, I prefer a smooth Scottish one .

I note that you gentlemen reside in different countries but in these days of e-commerce, it is at the tips of our fingers to place an order of tons of stuffs and have them delivered to the vast majority of countries in the world. If you don't mind me being a busybody, I would like to respectfully suggest that Spyhunter order a bottle of whiskey, the type of which is to be mutually agreed, from one of the many online sellers based in the Netherlands and have it delivered to Dutchy's to-be-specified address.QED! Here's one of the many examples of online whisky dealers:https://www.whiskysite.nl/en/ and also a sample page; https://www.whiskysite.nl/en/search/singleton/

I am only an occasional whisky drinker (haven't touched it in years till recently) but a few months ago I happened to have won a bottle of Singleton (pic below) at a dinner event. It taste good and I would recommend it but then I am no authority on whiskys.

May I take the unsolicited, self-granted liberty of chipping in as a follower of the exchanges between you two fine gentlemen? The bet was agreed circa five months ago and as we are not getting any younger, (I am assuming all three of us are above fifty), details of certain not-so-important matters might slip our minds. So allow me to dig out and refresh the relevant facts pertaining to the points of the agreement. Here we go:

Dutchy wrote:

But lets make it interesting. If you want to put your money were your mouth is, let's put a good bottle of wiskey on it, whether Wilders / PVV is going to be the largest party in the '17 Dutch national elections. Deal?!

Spyhunter wrote:

Deal! Or would you prefer a bottle of Bols, if I lose?

Dutchy wrote:

Nope, no Jenever for me, don't like it, I prefer a smooth Scottish one .

I note that you gentlemen reside in different countries but in these days of e-commerce, it is at the tips of our fingers to place an order of tons of stuffs and have them delivered to the vast majority of countries in the world. If you don't mind me being a busybody, I would like to respectfully suggest that Spyhunter order a bottle of whiskey, the type of which is to be mutually agreed, from one of the many online sellers based in the Netherlands and have it delivered to Dutchy's to-be-specified address.QED! Here's one of the many examples of online whisky dealers:https://www.whiskysite.nl/en/ and also a sample page; https://www.whiskysite.nl/en/search/singleton/

I am only an occasional whisky drinker (haven't touched it in years till recently) but a few months ago I happened to have won a bottle of Singleton (pic below) at a dinner event. It taste good and I would recommend it but then I am no authority on whiskys.

Interested to see the Independent Group's questioning of CSIRO re MH370. It's time the flaperon flap was over - the plane was shot down over the South China Sea, period. I want an aeroplane, even in bits, not a flaperon off a Chinese 777 in for maintenance.

Looks like Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are in trouble over Syria. Like MH370 we have have evidence without an audit trail, in this case some sarin samples. I'd be a lot more impressed if MI6 actually had some assets on the ground in Khan Shaykhun. Always look at the chain of evidence.

For readers of British Mensa's excellent Flypaper the latest issue (159) has an interesting article by Martin Holloway on AF447. That was another case with a missing link in the chain of evidence, to wit the linking of the black boxes to the shot-down aircraft.

Martin knows his stuff. Whilst he accepts the OVE, up to a point, and does not query the authenticity of the black boxes, he is clearly startled by the degree of incompetence attributed to the pilots. He also makes the point I have been making since the shoot-down - the boys had GPS, which no more needs a pitot tube to give a ground speed indication than my Daimler. 117 knots ground speed in a laden A330? 17 deg pitch up? And they didn't know they were stalled?

You'd be worrying about stalling a laden DC-6 at 117 knots, never mind a wide-body. And 17 degrees? Stuff would have rolling back towards the cockpit door - coffee cups, pens, you name it. How could any trained pilot, let alone an experienced airline pilot, not know the plane had stalled at 17 deg, working ADIs or not, and the ADIs were working.

The OVE is fatuous nonsense. Sadly Marine isn't likely to win on 7th May, so we won't be seeing a serious investigation in France any time soon.

117 knots ground speed in a laden A330? 17 deg pitch up? And they didn't know they were stalled?

I might be being a bit of a wally or something, but I'm sure AF447's wings couldn't care less about their groundspeed. Of course aircraft need pilot tubes, airspeed is the name of the game with flying you know.

117 knots ground speed in a laden A330? 17 deg pitch up? And they didn't know they were stalled?

I might be being a bit of a wally or something, but I'm sure AF447's wings couldn't care less about their groundspeed. Of course aircraft need pilot tubes, airspeed is the name of the game with flying you know.

You're not wrong, but Spyhunter is not wrong either. 117 knots ground speed in a laden A330, that is something a pilot would find meaningful.

Sure, send you a PM with my address, looking forward to receiving it. I will make the first toast to your health.

And the second to me. Spyhunter, I'm joining you in the ranks of published author pretty soon. Two years in the making, including more than a year of production delays due to sponsorship issues, my 200 page, 90,000 words, 11"x11" illustrated tome on the three postwar generations of 50 professional photographers and a brief history of professional photography in Singapore will be out within the next two months. Like yours, it is quite niche, and it will be on very limited sales, with the majority of the 1,000 copies given free to public libraries and schools as per agreement with the sponsors. And no, I'm not as humble as your good self though much poorer.

Sure, send you a PM with my address, looking forward to receiving it. I will make the first toast to your health.

And the second to me. Spyhunter, I'm joining you in the ranks of published author pretty soon. Two years in the making, including more than a year of production delays due to sponsorship issues, my 200 page, 90,000 words, 11"x11" illustrated tome on the three postwar generations of 50 professional photographers and a brief history of professional photography in Singapore will be out within the next two months. Like yours, it is quite niche, and it will be on very limited sales, with the majority of the 1,000 copies given free to public libraries and schools as per agreement with the sponsors. And no, I'm not as humble as your good self though much poorer.

I drink to that! Seriously, well done! Quite an achievement to get published! I hope I will get the chance to do it one day. I am writing a novel, but I haven't worked on it for over a year

Good luck with the book Neutrino! Very few people are as humble as myself!

Well said Flighty - of course pilots are going to notice 117 knots ground speed in a laden 330! That says one thing and one thing only - you're falling out of the sky.

300 knot headwinds are thankfully rare! Of course airspeed is what matters - my point is that if your pitot tubes have all failed and you have no ASI the GPS ground speed readout will give you an indication of your airspeed. You should have a rough idea of the wind speed and direction, indeed if you're pitots have all gone U/S suddenly you'll have a fairly good idea, enough to keep you from stalling anyway.

Sadly, it looks as though Macron will win tomorrow and we'll have another 5 years of cover-up in Paris. Along with Concorde the AF447 cover-up has destroyed the credibility of French aircraft 'accident' investigation. The Fifth Republic continues to be mired in sleaze, like its Vichy forerunner.

117 knots ground speed in a laden A330, that is something a pilot would find meaningful.

Spyhunter wrote:

Well said Flighty - of course pilots are going to notice 117 knots ground speed in a laden 330! That says one thing and one thing only - you're falling out of the sky.

No it isn't. When I fly, I only ever look for the ground speed when I need to know the ETA, calculate rate of descent, or out of pure curiousity. That's it. It absolutely certainly is one of the last places a pilot would look for if the aircraft was doing strange things. It also tends to be a pretty finicky piece of equipment too, on a couple of recent flights I caught it displaying 20 knots during approach.

Spyhunter wrote:

300 knot headwinds are thankfully rare!

No they aren't. 300 knots is pretty common, especially in the tropics where you have a lot more energy in the air.

Spyhunter wrote:

Of course airspeed is what matters - my point is that if your pitot tubes have all failed and you have no ASI the GPS ground speed readout will give you an indication of your airspeed.

If you lose the pitot tubes, the method is to maintain pitch and power. Correcting your flight based on ground speed will only get you killed.

I agree with Seahawk, with respect. Ground speed gives you an indication. If all your pitots suddenly go u/s, you should have enough situational awareness to know roughly what the wind is doing and work out your approximate airspeed from your groundspeed.

I must confess that I've never encountered a headwind of 300 knots - I can't believe they're as common as all that. Journeys would be seriously delayed if aircraft were only doing a ground speed of say 200 knots! Of course in my old Bulldog we would have been flying backwards with a 300 knot headwind! Most probably upside down as well, if I were at the controls.

Well done to Singapore by the way - they apparently looked after my old man, now in his late 80s, on a very rare trip home from Oz recently, and back to Eagle Farm via Changi. They're a good airline. Dad was a Sabre jockey back in the day.

Anybody know anything about Baltic Air, BTW? I've been asked to pop over to Riga in July and they seem to be the only option from the UK. They seem to fly fairly antique 73s, but perhaps I'm just being a bit sniffy!

Dutchy: the French covered up the missing spacer on the port bogie, for some time, along with the fact that the aircraft was overweight and had been given the wrong runway, which resulted in her taking off downwind. Then they invented that story about the missing titanium strip from the Continental DC-10-30. That aircraft was inspected on arrival in Houston and the wear trips were intact. I'm the one who warned Gordon Bethune that his fine airline was being set up.

I rather liked Continental and was sorry to see them swallowed up by the fluffy-bunny-killers.

Their Business First was an excellent product, as indeed was their old First Class. I seem to recall a rather good selection of ports and liqueurs on a flight home from Houston during the battle to save Rolls from our community partner the Hun.

I agree with Seahawk, with respect. Ground speed gives you an indication. If all your pitots suddenly go u/s, you should have enough situational awareness to know roughly what the wind is doing and work out your approximate airspeed from your groundspeed.

Which would be assuming you knew the exact windspeed and direction, and that it remains a constant. Breaking news, winds rarely remain the same for very long at those altitudes.

Pitch and power is the correct way to do it, not playing about with unknown variables that aren't even used for flying the aircraft in the first place. It would have worked for AF447 too, much better than your suicidal ground speed method in any case. Not to mention situational awareness from using the weather radar properly and looking outside as well.

My last post seems to have got lost! No-one sensible is saying you fly a plane without a functioning ASI by the groundspeed. The argument is that the groundspeed readout from the GPS can be used to work out a rough airspeed whilst you stabilise the aircraft and turn towards land. Of course you should look outside the aircraft and watch your pitch and power.

Once you're in radar range (it's no accident that unlike TWA800, AF447 was shot down outside radar range - the Germans and Iranians learnt from their mistake) you can ask for radar guidance. ATC should be able to give a reasonable Met report as well and if need be a chase plane could be sent up.

The old man was saved by a chase plane over West Germany once, a fellow Sabre, after he lost his pitot tube when putting in a spot of low-level aviating, so low level in fact that he was below the top of the nearest tree!

No-one sensible is saying you fly a plane without a functioning ASI by the groundspeed. The argument is that the groundspeed readout from the GPS can be used to work out a rough airspeed whilst you stabilise the aircraft and turn towards land.

You don't need a speed indication (unrealiable or not) to stabilize the aircraft, you nugget! What part of it don't you get?

It really is quite telling how little you know about flying, when you also go on to suggest that "you should look outside the aircraft". Yeah sure, at night, over the ocean in IMC. Sure!

Spyhunter wrote:

The old man was saved by a chase plane over West Germany once, a fellow Sabre, after he lost his pitot tube when putting in a spot of low-level aviating, so low level in fact that he was below the top of the nearest tree!

Well if he was below the level of the treetops, then he wasn't exactly IMC, was he now...

It was you who suggested looking outside the aircraft VSMUT! Given that there was lightning (was there not?) you aren't going to be completely blind, albeit that you need to preserve night vision. We all know that IMC conditions can vary. Even on the darkest night however you should be able to see the navigation lights, depending on cockpit view - if need be, if the wingtip lights could not be seen from the cockpit (I've never been in an A330 cockpit, indeed I've only been in six commercial aircraft cockpits in flight: a VC-10, a 767, a DC-3, a HS748/Andover, a KingAir and a DHC Beaver seaplane), the cabin crew could assist. I respectfully suggest that you will get some visual indication of an incipient stall in most IMC conditions.

In your haste to rubbish my aviation knowledge, with respect, you may have misunderstood me - the speed indication is one of several things which should tell an experienced airline pilot that he needs to stabilise the plane. Attitude and vibration as the stall approaches, assuming that pitot-linked stall warnings are U/S, are others.

I simply don't buy that two experienced airline pilots (a) did not know that their plane had stalled and (b) did not know how to effect a recovery.

I have not I hope exaggerated my limited aircraft handling experience in this thread, but I have been trained to spot an approaching stall, I have been in an aircraft which was being deliberately stalled by a QFI to teach me stall recovery techniques and I have recovered a stalled military aircraft in flight. I have also stalled a heavy aircraft in a simulator, in a turn, albeit not intentionally, being unable in that case to recover the 'aircraft' as it was a VC-10. Obviously the QFI had permitted me to enter the stall regime in order to teach me the huge risks associated with stalling a T-tailed aircraft. It was a lesson once absorbed I never forgot. A stall is not something which happens, unless you're flying a Cessna 170. Most aircraft will tell you they're about to stall.

The BAe Bulldog has been unfairly criticised for its stall characteristics, IMHO. From memory they stalled left wing low and at least one aircraft was spun in, leading to an 8,000 ft safety height for stalls. Yes you needed to recover the aircraft quickly, but you should never delay recovering from a stall anyway and the aircraft gave you ample warning of an approaching stall, indeed you could fly it quite close to the stall and just hold it there. The vibration was progressive and you got lots of feedback from the airframe.

The old man most certainly wasn't IMC when he lost his pitot in a that tree-top! There's a photo of his Sabre after he landed, BTW, in the standard text on the Canadair Sabre in RAF service. I gather the bent jet-pipe was fairly hot (he'd also collided with the ground, having been ordered to do some strafing straight back from leave without a familiarisation flight, which he's asked for). He had very properly declined a suggestion of ejecting as he was over a fairly built up area of West Germany.

We all know the limitations of met reports but ATC should be able to get a reasonable winds aloft estimate to a pilot in difficulty, e.g. from other aircraft.

Welcome to the thread where we do some serious thinking, readytotaxi! .

Even on the darkest night however you should be able to see the navigation lights, depending on cockpit view - if need be, if the wingtip lights could not be seen from the cockpit.

I might be being a wally here, but the wingtip navigation lights will always be at a fixed point from the cockpit regardless of the attitude of the aircraft. So I don't quite see what you're getting at.

Also, aren't those lights mainly for the benefit of other aircraft and the airport tower?

The argument is that experienced pilots either did not know their aircraft had stalled or did not know how to effect a recovery. I'm not buying!

In the posited scenario, which is admittedly artificial to the point of absurdity, all the pitot tube heaters have failed at the same time and the pressure instruments are down. The pilots are then left with secondary indications of airspeed, altitude and vertical speed. The navigation lights are indeed there for other aircraft, but they tend to glow off clouds and should give an experienced observer an indication of an extreme alpha angle.

The pitch indication is gyroscopic, is it not, and should give you your alpha angle, or are the BEA saying the pitot failures affected the AI, which I am sure is called something else on a 330! GPS should give you a rough estimate of airspeed, as you ought to have a rough idea of wind speed and direction at the time your pressure instruments all went U/S.

The whole thing is ridiculous and is predicated on the assumption that the French did not fake black boxes.

Some breaking news on MH17, on VeteransToday.com - seems a Russian media outlet has come across some very embarrassing stuff on the Ukrainian SBU, which may be genuine. We know the Ukrainian air force were involved.

Some breaking news on MH17, on VeteransToday.com - seems a Russian media outlet has come across some very embarrassing stuff on the Ukrainian SBU, which may be genuine. We know the Ukrainian air force were involved.

May I be very skeptical about any Russian media, especially about this? There isn't any free media in Russia and the Russians have a vested interest in this, not to be shown the ones whom have shot the MH17 down. All still indicates to the opposition or Russian soldiers.

I would regard VeteransToday.com as mainstream in this context. Many of its authors are former law enforcement or intelligence officers and it has good links to the CIA, DIA, GRU and FBI.

The forum rules appear to me to be aimed more at commercial websites or solicitations. I hear what Dutchy says with respect about the Russian media, but in fact they have had a better track record on MH17 than the Western media, who have printed any old nonsense that has come along.

MH17 has almost died a death in the Western media, as word that the Chinese and Ukrainians shot the plane down has spread. The media won't report the truth, but have slowly backed away from the official version of events, which is now discredited.

My analysis of the MH370 shootdown, so far as I know, has been accepted behind the scenes by the Australian, Chinese, American and British governments. Not sure about Kuala Lumpur, but they know the plane was shot down and encouraged the Southern Indian Ocean search in bad faith.

Expecting a good announcement from President Trump shortly on the absurd Paris Climate Change Agreement. Exposure of the Global Warming Hoax will benefit the aviation industry.

I think it's getting to the stage now where we can stop feeding the troll. Let's draw a line under this thread.

With due respect to both you and your opinion, the purpose of this thread, as the title clearly stated, is for Spyhunter to expound his theories on the MH incidents however far out it might or might not sound. As such he is right on topic. Also, the thread is for his fans (whatever the number may be) so those who don''t care for his thoughts have and can exercise their option not to read or even come in. That was my intention from the beginning; to make it clear to everyone what they might be getting into when they click on this topic. They are free to choose what they want to do. Thank you and have a nice weekend.

Sure, flying is not much different to driving a car. You can drive 100.000s of miles safe and well within the limits of the car, yet you will most likely be unable to control the car when it loses control as some external influence suddenly puts you outside the limits of controlled drive. In a plane it is just a lot more difficult and you need to co-ordinate your actions with the person in the other seat.